The trouble with lemurs

Tuesday 11 February

"The trouble with lemurs is the same as the trouble with meerkats: they make very poor pets because they mark the house and their owners." Wikipedia

I am aware that I arrived at Mark and Ikeraam's place on 18 January, to fizzy wine, fabulous supper and a Cape Town sunset to simultaneously break my heart and make me believe all is possible.

But I worry.

I worry that by, or before, 22 March, our scheduled date for the beginning of the drive to Jo'burg, they will be so irritated by me, my stuff, by our romantic suppers for three, by my choice of foreign language DVDs, my dull cooking, my lack of cooking (in most UK homes I'd be okay because I'm up for the washing up, but here we have Staff, so even if I do the washing up I'm ingratiating myself with her, and not with the chaps, which is not to say I'm not for trying to charm Staff....), my every-so-often managing to be caught in a state of tears due to my broken heart, the strangeness of my working schedule, my inability to turn the lights off at night without turning all the lights on first - well, actually, that's their architect's fault - and legion other smaller and larger annoyances about ME will make them want to throw me off this, the 12th floor.

I raise the issue one day:
"I've had offers to stay with other people... you know... while I'm here."
"Oh."
"How, you know, would that be? Maybe I should."
"Well, itt's up to you."
"Well, I was thinking it was more, you know, up to you guys."
"If you do go, don't go for long."

No more information than I had before, possibly, even slightly less, given a rather heightened sense of paranoia and broken-heartedness and, well, I have no idea what else in the mix.

I stay put.

Before Martin and Jacques return from Namibia, I have my lecture to deliver. My lecture about journalist safety at City Varsity. That lecture I agreed to on that sunny afternoon, writing happily with Vanessa, feeling pretty much invincible. Yeah, that one. I write it down and everything - a radical break with my usual routine of... not writing things down properly. I do put in some sections where I am going to riff, or do bits of the show, but basically I trawl my brain, the death and danger stats on the CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) website, rifle through my passionately-held beliefs about press freedom and the state we are all in, and and and....

And.... who knows what they thought of the lecture. I kept remembering to look at my notes and I covered most of that stuff, about how journalism has changed and the risks that there are and not to be bullied into going anywhere, but to remain ambitions - don't let anyone take that either; that journalists are bound to be at risk, terrible things will happen, which doesn't met we ought not to let people go if they want to, unless we really ought not to let them go; that risk assessments are there for the protection of the employer; that broadcasters, papers etc are not necessarily your friend after you're dead and they may try to close down official lines of enquiry, may threaten your family with legal action, as the BBC did to us.

But that was all so serious and I know listeners need some light relief, so next we play guess the five most dangerous countries for journalists since 1992. It takes ages, they're way off-beam. Mali is in the news, and that's one of the guesses; I make a joke about it not being there yet, but, you know, just wait.

They get Iraq, but they don't get the others:

1. Iraq
2. Philippines
3. Algeria
4. Russia
5. Pakistan

Mostly they've never heard of Algeria, so it being in the top five is a double-whammy. We are having so much fun, we look at the next five and yes, I make a joke about Kate's country of death not making it into the top five and how frustrating that is for a high-achiever like me. We find India surprising:

6. Somalia
7. Columbia
8. Syria
9. India
10.Mexico

Some of these folk will go on to be music journalists, the majority not to be journalists at all, I'm sure, if my experience of further education is anything to go by. I wonder about my relevance here. Who knows whether there is any point to me at all, this lecture or, you know, on the planet at all.

But I feel vindicated. It turns out I know some stuff, I really have become a journalist safety expertine (a small expert). It's not my career, I tell them at the outset, it's more of a hobby. I tell them that journalists and their managers have told me, have told my family, that we are not allowed to comment because we are not journalists. At the time, years ago, I was too damaged, too nauseous, too afraid to say a word. These days I'd point out to them that a journalist is someone who gathers and then disseminates information: there is no club, you don't need a certificate; I'd tell them to get over themselves.

I'd tell them that the trouble with me is that I have been touched by the meerkat of murder, by the knowledge and experience of the hell my sister went through because her employers failed to stop her thinking she had to go to Somalia to keep her job, and that it has marked my home (still full of boxes of Kate's stuff) and my psyche and my tenuous future. I have been visited by the lemur of learning and I feel duty-bound to pass it on. Because it's not about me, it's about incredible people all over the world risking their lives to get the story out: if I can't get that story out, then what am I?